AUGUST 20, 2013

This Wall Street Journal (Aug. 17-18, 2013) article describing how more U.S. auto plants are cranking out cars around the clock discusses a variety of tactics for matching capacity to demand. After years of layoffs, plant closures and bankruptcies, U.S. auto makers are pushing factories to the limits. At GM, Ford, and Chrysler, more flexible union agreements now allow the companies to build cars for 120 hours a week or more while paying less in overtime pay.

Nearly 40% of car factories in North America now operate on work schedules that push production well past 80 hours a week, compared with 11% in 2008. “There has never been a time in the U.S. industry that we’ve had this high a level of capacity utilization,” says one industry expert. In 2005, the industry had 925,700 employees. In 2012, the workforce stood at 647,600.

Changes in union labor contracts have been critical to running auto factories harder. The Detroit Three now can schedule work at night and on weekends without paying as much in overtime as they would have in the past. Adding a third shift, as many plants have done, also reduces overtime. Overtime pay also starts after 40 hours a week, not after 8 hours a day as in the past. And a newly hired Detroit factory worker now earns about $15/hour versus $28/hour for veteran workers.

In Toledo, Chrysler is building all the hot-selling Jeep Wranglers it can. The plant has been running nearly round the clock, churning out about 800 Jeeps a day and using overtime to staff production lines 20 hours a day, 6 days a week for the past 2 years. Temporary workers fill in when regular employees aren’t available. Ford has gone a step further, adding a 4th crew of workers at some plants to keep those factories running 152 hours out of the 168 hours in a week.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

AUGUST 4, 2013

VW’s plant in Chattanooga TN

Clustering is an interesting topic. In Orlando, over 70,000 people are employed in the theme park cluster that includes Disney, Universal, Legoland, Sea World, Gatorland, and more. This week, Universal Studios announced record profits after sinking a quarter billion dollars into the Harry Potter exhibit–and is adding yet another 1,800 room hotel to its site.The Wall Street Journal (July 31, 2013) adds to the discussion with an article titled “Detroit Was a Cluster”.

“Clusters,” writes The Journal, ”offer powerful advantages such as labor market pooling. But these potent synergies can be lost when special technological competence becomes outmoded.” With lean manufacturing, clustering has become more important in the auto industry, with suppliers required to be between one hour and one day’s drive of factories. A new cluster has formed, known as the “auto corridor” between I-75 and I-65, which still includes the upper Midwest but has pulled the industry’s center of gravity steadily south.

The reason is well known: The Japanese, Germans and Koreans located their plants in the South to avoid the United Auto Workers. Honda was the bellwether when in 1980 it picked Marysville, Ohio for its first plant. Honda was expected to be required to employ the UAW, but picked a site in rural Ohio with little union presence. The firm soon concluded that its production system would be impossible with union workers, and that a UAW workforce could be avoided without undue political consequence.

Even a decade ago, more than half of all auto production jobs were still in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. Now it’s below 44%. Kentucky alone today claims 440 auto manufacturing-related businesses! The transplants made little secret of their motivation in passing up the substantial benefits of the then-cluster around Detroit. Every Toyota factory in the U.S. is non-union and all but one is in the South. Ditto Nissan, Mercedes, Hyundai, BMW and Kia.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.